Episode of the Week : Turnabout Intruder
- Thread starter Botany Bay
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6, for its historical importance as TOS's final episode.
One. This episode is an appalling abomination.
Yes, Scotty and McCoy got a good scene together. Shatner got to show some versatility, and Sandra Smith was excellent as Kirk. I gave it a four, but now I think that was too harsh.
Six.
Six.
I guess my main problem with this episode has always been that our heroes never really DO anything to solve the problem of how to get Kirk back into his own body, it just happens by itself as the transference wears off at the end of the show. This makes the resolution of the episode, to me at least, a bit of a deus ex machina and anticlimactic.
I love this episode. Not because it's "good." It's not. But it's so damned crazy. Shatner is amazing in this (even suffering from the flu), the air is relentlessly grim and the ending downbeat. It's a poor final episode, back in the day, end of the season and series episodes were usually not strong. People didn't wait around for season finales. Poor episodes were usually pushed to the back end, when viewership was down (The Fugitive did this in its third season, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea in its fourth). So even if this one were done earlier, it could have been pushed back, "banished" to the end of the season. It;s not a finale but a "last episode." Funny how this one got a TV Guide Close-Up.
It gets a 7 from me. A guilty pleasure.
It gets a 7 from me. A guilty pleasure.
If only.... if only....
4. A few good things--Shatner's performance--especially impressive considering his illness (I wonder how many of the company got the flu from him!), a charming guest star, and an interesting premise. But none of that can overcome this:
LESTER: "Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women."
If I were a woman I would hate this episode. It encapsulates the undercurrent of "women as eye candy" that ran through the entire series after the first pilot. This is one of the great failings of TOS, and how apropos that the final episode be wrapped around this mindset.
4. A few good things--Shatner's performance--especially impressive considering his illness (I wonder how many of the company got the flu from him!), a charming guest star, and an interesting premise. But none of that can overcome this:
LESTER: "Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women."
If I were a woman I would hate this episode. It encapsulates the undercurrent of "women as eye candy" that ran through the entire series after the first pilot. This is one of the great failings of TOS, and how apropos that the final episode be wrapped around this mindset.
I gave this a generous 5. Thinking more about the episode I was being overly benevolent.
Yes, a lot of talking. The premise is a good one, make the mutiny a real one.
The mutineers figure out what is wrong and have to hijack the ship to take it back to Camus II.
Have a moral decision, Kirk in Lester's body is mortally wounded as the mutineers take the ship, shot by the deranged Lester. Then they race back to Camus II and have to decide, restoring Lester to Lester's body is a death sentence. If Kirk is still conscious will he allow it? He loved her once. What will Spock and McCoy do?
Etc, etc.
1. A terrible way to (unintentionally) end the series. Misogynistic twaddle.
^ What he said!
I would have rated it a little bit higher than a 3 if it weren't the last (terrible) episode.
I would have rated it a little bit higher than a 3 if it weren't the last (terrible) episode.
This same plot happened on the Gilligan's Island "The Friendly Physician" 1966 episode three years before. 
https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4091/5066500222_a42bb06942.jpg
https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4091/5066500222_a42bb06942.jpg
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There's a (comedy) movie called Turnabout about body-swapping in order to conclude that traditional gender roles are the best, dating from 1940, based on a book from 1931. Same subtext and everything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnabout_(film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnabout_(film)
I always thought she meant that Kirk's world of being a starship captain didn't give him time for a serious relationship with a women. I never thought it was some proclamation that Starfleet didn't allow woman captains. That notion seems absurd since even in the first pilot the second in command was a woman. The line seems more like clumsy writing. She says "YOUR world" to Kirk meaning him; not starfleet in general.
This is how I always interpreted it as well.
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